A WHOSDOINGIT? MYSTERY: OS, hardware or outside forces?

THE VICTIM: Tower IBM clone built to order, with a 3 GHz Pent 4 CPU and 736 MB RAM running Windows XP (currently w/o Service Pack 2). Still using dial up, browsing with Mozilla.

Starting a few months back, I started noticing that when I first logged online (and the connection was always running at peak 54Kbps, please don't giggle that loud) it would take repeated attempts to get pages to load. But then, afterwhile, the trouble would disppear and things would run as quickly as expected. I was long overdue updating my Norton subscription (those of us on fixed budgets have to wait for good deals) and when I installed it, it found all kinds of third-party crap, remote operating controls which it cut off (ever since, I get a half-dozen hits a day from their operators attempting to access them).

Yet, the slow downs continued. Then last week while online after awhile, the entire system froze up. When nothing else worked, I pushed the reboot button and then shut it down for the night. The next day, I restarted it with no problem, but after about an hour it froze again. I'm in Southern California, so it's been unusually cold this year so far and only now starting to warm up. A current roommate is an actual computer genius type from CalTech and he suggested the system was overheating, probably from dust.

Sure enough, the inside was disgusting (I last cleaned it out about two years ago). I carefully got everything off the fans and vents, but stayed away from most of the motherboard. Restarted the system and it worked fine for a while before again freezing up (BTW, it never does it at the same point or action). This time, however, when I went to reboot it it actually froze up during the initial system load. My in-house geek squad suggested taking to the shop, that it seemed more like a hardware failure after cleaning it.

The shop takes one look and says it's still full of dust. I finally get it back yesterday, hook it up, it starts fine but.... it still runs slow online. The first 3-5 attempts to load a page fail and when it does start to do it they are incredibly slow to load. I was going to do yet another full system Norton Anti-virus scan but it was taking too long for the update for viruses to finish so I went to bed. When I got up, the system had crashed in the night but the only suggestion the "Tell Microsoft About this Problem" could provide was BIOS issues - which it always says after a crash when they have no clue (I burn alot of DVDs, so I've seen it after protection-related crashes).

My roommie gave me name of an anti-spyware program that found, supposedly, 562 bots but it turned out to be a come-on to buy the program if you wanted to actually remove them. I just downloaded AVG Anti-Spyware to check that out. I guess I'm also going to finally install Service Pack 2.

Any other ideas?

 

Unless the dust is killing your modem (which i highly doubt) then its sounding like its spyware.

Download the usual regiment of adaware, spybot, avg, etc and do all the scans and removal and what not.

Then download a program called Security Task Manager, Look at the top items that are rated by threat assessment, see if anything glaring sticks out.

Download HiJackThis, then post the log...(I suppose that should be in the spyware forum, but I really could care less.. and I could be wrong)

It really does sound like spyware, usually most "intermittent" and "partial" connections are due to spyware or bad driver .. usually the former

 

I was about to do that, but this warning stopped me cold: "This program requires some know-how. You could criple your OS if you don't know what you're doing. "

Yes, but the locking up part happened when it was starting up, not connected online.

 

They have to say that, you can use the program to make changes to the system... just do a system scan and save the log and it won't make any changes.

Which leads me to believe that it is two problems... but we are addressing the internet problem

 

My thinking exactly. As I told someone last night, my tech problems are always like an episode of "House. MD": always get two unrelated issues at once. In this case, it's probably three: the dust, spyware AND the lack of Windows XP updates.

At the moment, all three have been addressed in some manner (only one spyware program used so far, and the damn updates **bleeped** up my Norton anti-virus and I have to re-install it) and the system is running without any slowdowns whatsoever.

 

I love the House analogy, I love that show.. anyways

It is a good analogy, you got to look at things like yeah I do have two problems but then you got to ask questions like...

-Did they start at the same time
-Was their a cause and effect relationship (I dropped it now it won't turn on .. simple i know but apply that everywhere)
-Is it software or hardware related (dust could cause the system to not turn on (hardware), but probably isn't going to slow down the internet (software).... although it could be hardware, you want to start with the more likely suspects .. like spyware.. it probably craps out internet connections at a much higher rate than dust would ever ..if ever..

In my experience with "dusty" computers it can lead to a lot of hardware related heat issues but that is about it. I would recommend downloading some kind of program to monitor temperature if you are worried about thermal issues. I think "motherboard monitor" has that functionality.

As far as the windows xp updates, I'd say they aren't really critical until you solve the underlying problem. Most of them just fix vulnerabilities in programs but they won't actually "cure" your computer.

 

Here are some spyware apps to run, out of all of them I highly recommend a-squared, it is very good at picking up things others miss.

a-squared free

Hijack this

ad-aware

spybot search and destroy

avg anti-spyare

And since you have dial-up you are at risk for "dialers" which could very easily be the reason you connection is slow at first. So here is a tool designed specificall to scan and remove dialers...

a-squared Anti-dialer

spyware terminator


also post the hijack this log asap...

 

Oh good lord, save us from the freaking children. I'm sorry, I thought this was a board intended for mature folks and one off hand use of the F-bomb wasn't going to send someone quivering into a corner asking for their blankey. Damn, even Craigslist isn't this uptight. In the immortal words of Warren Oates, lighten up Francise.
******
For the others, thanks alot for the help and especially the tool suggestions. Will be running them this weekend and god help anyone who is ever stupid enough to admit to me that they like to pull this kind of hack crap - I will probably beat the ever living snot out of them on the spot.

 

For those of you reading this thread, and are entertained by the fact that someone has waited all this time to install, or better yet...slipstream and install XP's SP2...and, yet stand in AWE!?!?! when they're system has been ravaged by malware...care to wonder where this information came from?

Hmmmmmm...... solve the underlying problem?

Answer: Ya can't.

Why do you ask?

The underlying problem is a computer WITHOUT the updates. Hence, the reason they are listed as critical. Because as soon as the exploit is found...and the information released, 10 times out of 9, someone out there is going to write code to exploit the vulnerability. Leaving your unpatched system open for an anal probing without the perpetual grease.

Once these issues are patched, you can still get infected...mind you, but the infection can no longer take advantage of the bugged code.


Keep your systems up to date. End of story. If you have any issues with patches, (other than full blown integrated service packs), they can be sorted and uninstalled.

Anyone telling you you don't need security updates...well, you get the picture.

 

Blankie! Blankie! Keep it down, adults, lmao, which you seem to think you are, wouldn't get pissed off at that, nor would they 'drop the F-bomb' for no reason and then rant about getting 'scolded.'

Formatting ye PC solves everything and is never my last resort but my first.

 

So, apparently since I first signed up for this site a few years ago the rules changed and profanity which was once just considered another word has since become toxic to some with delicate compositions.

Hey, my bad and I would have said this but one of the above skin-thinned moderators decided that the above chidement was directed towards them (it was actually the policy, which they might have gotten if they had climbed back down from their high horse and noticed that I used no names in said chidement) and decided to ban me.

Of course, if this really was such a verbotem thing then it should appear in bold letters at the top of the page where you compose such. Every site is different and while some online rules are pretty SOP (like no personal attacks, no discussion of illegal activies that can get the board shutdown), language varies from site to site. Hate to get pedantic, but the idea that this is a board for mature folks goes right out the window when can't look at the context that a word was used and see that it was simply a modifier and not a verb (or noun).

Sorry, but people don't re-read the rules every bloody time they go to a site to see if they've changed. Profanity had been used in the past so it was perfectly reasonable to assume nothing had changed.

And this is exactly how folks turn into trolls - unnamed moderator wasn't happy with just scolding me, they then decided not to see if that was the end of it (or for my conditioned apology above) but then knocked me off the site for a week. Hello, Internet cafes & library access? I have a pretty thick skin online and a sense of humor about such things, but lacking those things it ain't hard to get back on a board.

Again, I do appreciate the help from those who supplied it, even if some came with snarky comments about my updating habits that were warranted. Between the updates and the anti-spyware, everything hums along again. Maybe I can get some of those problem burns to work now. See you on the DVD R&B boards...

 

eh, this thread is getting to the ..probably should be locked..stage